• Sigmund Freud put forth a model of the human mind having an unconscious division residing beneath the conscious region, akin to an iceberg, of which the tip peeking above the water’s surface represents the conscious mind, and the portion submerged underwater representing the unconscious.

• The unconscious mind is said to contain all the thoughts, feelings, and memories that have been pushed out of conscious awareness in an attempt to prevent them from threatening your identity. But while such components of yourself may be buried deep in your psyche, you may still be continually influenced by them, and manifest such influences through your actions and reactions.

• Your unconscious mind can work against your self-discipline, as unacceptable desires and impulses that have been pushed into the unconscious realm would likely continue to undermine your conscious efforts to reach your goals.

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Freud believed that people pushed threatening thoughts and feelings out of awareness, but that these could still work unconsciously to affect behavior.

In being honest with ourselves, however, we can bring this material back into the conscious mind and regain self-discipline and control.

The idea confounded Plato—how could it be that a person could rationally know the right thing to do but choose something else? For many ancient Greek philosophers, human rationality and reason were esteemed above all else, so they sometimes had real trouble explaining seemingly irrational behavior.

Saying you desire A but then choosing B certainly seems to be illogical.

But what if there was some third, hidden variable influencing things? What if you were in fact saying you wanted B, only you did so without knowing that you did? Modern psychology has in effect taken over from the ancient philosophers in trying to understand the motivations and drivers of human behavior, and one of its biggest developments was to establish the theory of the unconscious mind.

Founded and championed primarily by Sigmund Freud in the Victorian era, the idea was that the mind itself had a topology, i.e.

not all regions were the same, and some were hidden in the darkness, out of conscious awareness.

In the unconscious mind, Freud argued, we store all sorts of thoughts, motivations, feelings, memories and urges that have tangible influences on our daily lives, 1 although without us having the slightest awareness of them.

Jung, a theorist influenced partly by Freud, summed it up by saying, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Freud believed that most of the mind was unconscious, akin to the biggest portion of an iceberg that is actually lying invisibly under the surface.

On the other hand, your external behavior and conscious thoughts are said to be merely the “tip of the iceberg” and really a result of vast desires and urges that lay beneath your conscious awareness.

As an example, a student could have an unconscious inner desire to punish his parents for pushing him too hard academically, and for being too strict.

Because in the student’s conscious mind he strongly wants to believe he is hardworking and diligent, and because his more conscious mind really does want to make his parents proud, he pushes the desire to disobey them far out of awareness.

1 One desire is to work hard and pass an exam, but the other hidden desire is to fail spectacularly in the hope that doing so will prevent his parents from expecting so much of him.

The time comes to study for the exam, and he works hard, but somehow, he is always distracted, always finding excuses not to work, and even “accidentally” forgets study materials at school.

The trouble is not irrationality per se, but that he is being driven by a strong yet wholly unconscious desire that is working against his more conscious one.

His vulnerability to distraction, tendency to make excuses for slacking off, and frequent forgetfulness when it comes to school are all his unconscious mind’s handiwork in an attempt to fulfil his true desire to punish his parents.

However, his psyche makes sure that he remains unaware of such schemes happening beneath his conscious mind, as admitting his opposition to his parents is an unacceptable impulse that needs to be hidden away.

Thus, he may be as mystified by his inability to get on with work as anyone else! But no amount of cajoling, 1 threatening, or external pressure will change anything until he can bring his unconscious desires up into the surface of awareness.

The material in the unconscious isn’t pretty—Freud believed we repressed all those feelings and thoughts that were too painful or threatening to our self-conscious to acknowledge.

So, the mind simply pretended they didn’t exist.

Included in the unconscious mind are all those primal, sexual urges (i.e.

the life impulse called Eros) and socially unacceptable impulses for aggression and death (called the death impulse, or Thanatos).

You may think of the unconscious as the Pandora’s box of your mind, where all the dark and evil components of your psyche are locked away so they don’t wreak havoc in the rest of you.

In a sense, then, the process of repressing unacceptable impulses deep in the unconscious is simply part of the basic instinct of self- preservation.

1 However, some impulses remain too strong to be fully concealed; they tend to leak out and influence your thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors.

This is where it gets ugly for most people—having drives and impulses they cannot bear to accept continue to undermine them without their knowledge or consent.

Freud believed that a host of psychological problems had their root in the unconscious mind.

He theorized, for instance, that physical maladies such as paralysis or disturbances in vision could really just be outward manifestations of psychological conflicts and traumas buried deep in the unconscious.

As you can imagine, Freud’s theories caused quite a sensation at the time, since it implied that good, rational people could actually be quietly sitting atop swirling cauldrons of violent or perverse desires.

It pays to remember that Freud was certainly a product of the Victorian era he lived within, arguably one of the most anxious and morality-obsessed periods in Western history! 1 Ordinarily, the mind would have boundaries in place to prevent material in the unconscious from reaching the conscious mind.

Freud explained that these were the defence mechanisms, such as projection, reaction formation, regression, or sublimation.

Our student in the example above might keep his unconscious desires firmly hidden from himself by projecting his desire to disobey his parents onto other students.

The more he can look at them and say, “Look at them, they’re so lazy.

They have no discipline,” the more firmly he can entrench the idea that this is not in fact his desire, but something that belongs out there in the world.

Remaining unaware of all the unpleasant ways such unconscious impulses may “leak” out in your behavior can prove detrimental to not only your mental well-being, but also your physical health, social relationships, and personal goals.

But harboring unconscious material is not a hopeless case—even Pandora’s box contained hope.

1 Freud believed that carefully becoming aware of your unconscious mind and understanding how it influences you as a person is a necessary part of psychological healing; it is what will let “hope” out of the box, so to speak.

What you therefore need to do is become better aware of such drives and impulses working unconsciously to undermine you, and in so doing so, give yourself a better chance at directing your own fate instead of giving the reins to your hidden motivations.

Speculating that gaining insight into dormant psychological issues buried in the unconscious was the key to resolving his patients’ symptoms and problems, Freud instituted a host of techniques that would help bring up and reintegrate material from the unconscious into the conscious mind.

Among such techniques are dream work and a method known as “free association.” During free association, a person relaxes (i.e.

their conscious control loosens), and upon hearing a certain word, they quickly say whatever word/idea pops to mind, 1 revealing hidden associations and relationships.

For instance, a therapist mentions to the student in the above example the word “school.” The student may instantly reply “dead” without thinking, even when he claimed a moment earlier that school was the most important thing in his life.

In addition to free association, Freud used dream interpretation to unearth the secrets that the unconscious mind holds.

In Freudian thought, dreams are the “royal road” to the unconscious, and are abound with symbolic representations of our unconscious minds.

The student above could dream of running to avoid a giant avalanche of falling books, eventually saving himself but deliberately leaving behind his parents to be killed and buried under the mountain of books—a powerful but disguised indicator of how he really feels about his studies and his parents.

Though the theory of the unconscious mind has had immense influence on how humans understand their own behavior and 1 motivations, it’s important to remember that it is just a theory, and one that many disagree with.

Some theorists believe there’s no evidence for an unconscious mind at all, and that it in fact opens up a dangerous can of worms within the psychoanalytic relationship, where a therapist can control the narrative as they please.

Freud’s work has been regarded by many critics as deeply unscientific, as the intangible and unquantifiable nature of such concepts as the unconscious is argued by some as essentially unfalsifiable and therefore not very convincing as a theory.

As far as science goes, just because there is no way you can prove something wrong, doesn’t mean you can automatically assume it is right.

Nonetheless, Freud’s ideas did lay the groundwork for subsequent theories in the same area.

Today, cognitive psychologists are discovering that there are in fact unconscious, automatic processes involved in implicit memory, which is responsible for 1 how you’re able to perform certain skills without actively being conscious of them (e.g.

driving, walking a familiar route, riding a bike).

These ideas are rather different from what Freud intended, though, as cognitive psychologists posit that information is relegated to the unconscious mind not because there is pain, fear, or shame attached to it, but simply because it’s more efficient to do so.

How can Freud and the Idea of the Unconscious Mind Help with Self- Discipline? Freud never addressed the idea of self- discipline directly—in fact, one could be forgiven for thinking that he had a very pessimistic view of human nature, and felt that people may only be kidding themselves by fervently pursuing their conscious mind’s stated goal.

We can see echoes of this same perspective whenever people assume that the drive for mastery must come from nothing more than repressed sexual impulses, fear, or the disguised desire to dominate over others.

1 Obviously, simply asking yourself, “What unconscious motivators are driving my behaviour right now?” is not going to be all that effective.

After all, according to Freud, the more upsetting and threatening the feeling or thought, the further away you’ll hide it.

Unconscious material is generally out of your reach unless you put in the effort and take certain steps to uncover it.

So how can you realistically stop yourself from being negatively influenced by your unconscious beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and so on? How do you curb your unconscious mind’s power to sway you from the path of a self-disciplined life? Moreover, how do you take on such a task if some part of you is working hard to keep it all hidden? The only real way to get a handle on all your motivations, conscious and unconscious, is through developing self- awareness.

Without self-awareness, you will simply run along on the same track, never knowing why you truly behave as you do, or even that you can stop it.

As Jung 1 claimed, you’d “call it fate” and never properly understand your own role in the unfolding of your life.

Becoming aware of your unconscious desires and motivations is the first step to avoid being a victim of your own obliviousness and take your destiny in your own hands, and one of the most effective ways you can do so is by engaging in compassionate honesty.